New charges in fake-drug case in Dallas

Theft, perjury and engaging in organized crime are allegations officer now faces

THOMAS KOROSEC, Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Published 6:30 am, Monday, December 19, 2005

DALLAS - Four years after the so-called fake-drug scandal broke, prosecutors in Dallas have new evidence that police corruption was at the heart of the scheme that sent 30 Mexican immigrants to jail on false cocaine and methamphetamine charges.

A former narcotics officer recently began cooperating with authorities and, according to the lead prosecutor on the case, has provided information against his former partner, Mark Delapaz, whose work with a group of six confidential informants was at the center of the scandal.

Delapaz, a street squad detective, was nominated for officer of the year in 2001 for a series of major drug busts that turned out to involve 330 kilos of phony drugs, false testimony and the jailing of unsuspecting laborers or mechanics arrested off the streets of poor, predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods.

This month, the 38-year-old Delapaz was indicted on a charge of felony theft by a public servant, which alleged he stole roughly $80,000 that he recorded as being paid to his confidential informants, as well as charges of engaging in organized crime and aggravated perjury.

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"This is a direct result of the cooperation of Eddie Herrera, Delapaz's partner during that time period," said Dallas County Assistant District Attorney Toby Shook.

He said Herrera's testimony corroborated long-standing claims by several of the confidential informants that they received far less reward money than police records showed for their work making the 2001 busts, which police commanders and prosecutors thought at the time were legitimate.

Although police corruption was long suspected, it has not been charged until now in any of the federal or state cases brought against Delapaz, Herrera, the informants or two other former officers who worked on the fake cases.

Until the new charges were filed, the prevailing view of the scandal was that the officers were duped by lead informant Enrique Alonso, a drug dealer who began working with police after he was arrested for dealing cocaine.

'Two criminal enterprises'

In 2003, Alonso and
Jose Ruiz
, another paid informant, testified in federal court that they began planting fake drugs on innocent people because they realized the officers were not watching them closely and were not examining the seized drugs. They were being paid $1,000 for each kilo of drugs seized.

Alonso testified that he directed the production of the fake cocaine — from pool chalk purchased at a billiard supply outlet— selected the targets and notified Delapaz when and where the phony drug deals were to take place.

Shook said authorities now believe "what you had was two criminal enterprises going on at once, separate from one another but dependent on each other."

Investigators suspect that while the informants concocted the scheme and were motivated by greed, Delapaz let it continue because he was "taxing" the informants and skimming money from informant payments.

Delapaz, who joined the department in 1990, and his wife, also a Dallas police officer, filed for personal bankruptcy in December 2001, listing as debts $62,000 on credit cards, $41,000 in car loans and a $224,000 mortgage.

In 2003, a jury in federal court acquitted Delapaz of charges that he violated the civil rights of four people by lying in arrest reports and to a prosecutor about seeing drug transactions that never occurred.

He was convicted last April in state court of lying to a judge about the reliability of his informant to obtain a search warrant and sentenced to five years in prison. He has been free on bail while his appeal is being considered.

Denying the charges

Delapaz's attorney,
David Pire
, denied the new allegations against his client and said he believes they spring from two sources: the embarrassment the matter brought Dallas prosecutors and his client's unwillingness to accept a harsh sentence in past plea bargaining.

"I'm still trying to figure out how they plan on proving this (the new charges)," said Pire, whose client posted $120,000 bail.

"Eddie Herrera has testified on numerous times under oath that none of this stuff happened," Pire said. "I guess all of a sudden the government sprinkled some magic truth telling dust on Eddie."

To make its case, he said, the government will have to rely on Herrera — who was indicted in August on charges of aggravated perjury and tampering with evidence, but has not been charged with theft — and the informants, who all are either charged with or have been convicted of an assortment of felony charges related to the fake-drug matter.

"We're going to have shifting stories from numerous people," said Pire.

Delapaz faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the theft charge. The other charges carry up to 10 years in prison.

Three lengthy affidavits supporting the new allegations suggest prosecutors are attempting to make a circumstantial case that Delapaz pocketed the informant money. There is no evidence of extravagant purchases or high living.

In sworn court papers, a Texas Department of Public Safety investigator said Herrera told him that the two officers forged the informants' signatures on payment receipts for many of the fake-drug buys.

The payments for the bogus arrest of Emigdio Esparza were typical of those detailed in the affidavits. On July 19, 2001, Esparza, a Mexican immigrant, was standing near an intersection in East Dallas when Alonso and another man offered him $8 an hour to paint a room. They asked Esparza to drive one of their cars to a 7-Eleven, where they said they were meeting their boss.

As he was driving, a patrol officer pulled Esparza to the side of the road using the pretext of a traffic violation. Using a search warrant Herrera had obtained, the detectives searched the car and confiscated 68 kilos of what police claimed to be cocaine. Herrera later testified at an examining trial that Alonso had given them information that a suspect was bringing a large amount of cocaine to Dallas from Houston.

Esparza jailed five months

Delapaz claimed that he paid Alonso in seven installments a total of $50,000 for the bust, which was called at the time one of the largest drug seizures in Dallas history.

Esparza spent five months in jail before laboratory tests began revealing that the drugs in Delapaz's arrests were fake.

Dallas County District Attorney Bill Hill eventually dismissed 80 drug cases, including those involving real narcotics, brought by Delapaz and his crew of informants.

Esparza eventually sued the city and is one of 23 plaintiffs who earlier this year began collecting a total of $8 million in settlements.

"It's taken them four years to crack this band of brothers, which is what those officers were. I didn't think they would ever crack," said Don Tittle, a lawyer who handled Esparza's case against the city. "Finally the whole story starts coming out."